For many Britons living overseas, a deep-seated longing for home can become a physically painful experience. This is the reality for one woman who, after years abroad and a severe illness, finds herself torn between a comfortable life with her husband and an almost visceral need to return to her family and friends in the UK.
The Heart of the Dilemma
The writer, who nearly died from a serious illness, now manages a successful career change and lives in a lovely house with her husband. Despite these stable foundations—good jobs and a nice home—she confesses to profound loneliness. Her immune system has been compromised, leading to recurring sickness, and she finds it impossible to forge friendships as deep as those she left behind.
Her vision of home is idyllic: a beautiful little house, more time with her ageing parents, and a life where work takes a back seat to family. Yet, she is acutely aware that this may be a fantasy. "I know it won't be perfect and that we take ourselves and our problems with us," she writes, "but some days I am so homesick it hurts."
The Counterweight of Reality
Her husband represents the voice of practicality. He is concerned about the enormous financial cost and upheaval of a move, his own employment prospects, and the possibility that his wife may not find the happiness she seeks even back in the UK. This creates a difficult impasse. As advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith points out, the problem is one of weighing incomparable things: replenishable finances against irreplaceable time with ageing parents.
Gordon-Smith identifies a key risk: the idealisation of home. Having left many years ago, much of what the writer misses exists in the past. A return could mean asking her husband to shoulder significant dislocation simply for her to feel less of her own.
Breaking the Cycle of Inaction
The most crucial piece of advice offered is a meta-warning against inertia. Gordon-Smith writes, "Don't make this decision by stacking up days you didn't make the decision." For the person who desires change, the status quo has a powerful ally in daily distraction. Simply talking about other things day after day effectively enacts the decision to stay.
To combat this, a seemingly violent strategy is proposed: just start. Begin looking for jobs and houses back home. Initiate the paperwork for visas or pet documentation. By taking these concrete steps, the couple challenges the default outcome of staying put. It forces a joint confrontation with the reality of a move, preventing the wife from being the dreamer and the husband from being the naysayer.
The goal isn't to force a move unilaterally but to provoke a genuine, shared decision-making process. As Gordon-Smith concludes, the couple must ensure that whatever they do, it isn't merely the result of days spent not deciding.
